Krzysztof Penderecki, “Polymorphia”
Twinkie’s always believed that city is a living thing. Buildings and people are its cells and organs, sewers and streets its veins and nerves. If you keep your eyes open and your ear to the ground, you can take its pulse and know exactly what’s going on even when nobody tells you a thing.
Motown feels so anxious. People eye each other more warily than usual as they pass one another on the sidewalk. Stray dogs dart away from humans they normally stroll past. Even the weather seems to hold its breath as if waiting for somebody to start some shit. There’s an edginess to the city that makes Twinkie glad she’s wearing jeans and tennis shoes while she runs her errands today.
The trans sisters must sense Detroit’s weird mood too because only a couple of people showed up at TRANSitions today. Maggie’s absent too, and she’s always there even when she’s sick as a dog.
She gets home as day melts into a soupy pink-orange dusk. Hungry as hell and not even close to feeling like cooking, she fishes one of the menus from the kitchen drawer and settles on Tasty Thai. Shrimp pad thai is what she usually gets, but tonight her taste buds want something different. Maybe come kind of curry. She finally narrows her choices down to chicken masaman curry and chicken panang curry when the doorbell rings.
Twinkie peeks through the peephole. Two cops in uniform stand on her porch. She’s got half a mind to let ‘em stand there all night, but she’s too hungry and too tired to make things harder for them right now. She opens the door, eyes zipping right to the name tags reading Sands and Burke. They look at her like she’s the one trespassing.
“Can I help you?”
“Good evening, ma’am,” says the buff-looking one with the buzz cut named Burke, “we’re looking for a suspect in several assaults that have taken place recently. Do you know this man?”
Burke hands her a picture. It’s Elrond’s mugshot. In different circumstances, that bewildered wince caught on camera would be funny as hell. But two cops with guns too close to their itchy trigger fingers put a damper on the humor.
“Um…don’t I get a lawyer or something?”
“Just answer the question,” says Sands. Despite her slight frame, there’s an edge to her voice that makes the threat of arrest (or worse) clear. See, shit like this is why Twinkie can’t stand cops.
“I ain’t gotta answer a got-damn-thing. I have rights. So you can get a warrant, or you can step off.”
The triumph of stunning two white cops into silence fades as soon as their hands smoothly reach for their sidearms.
“Ma’am, I think it would be best for you to come with us,” says Burke.
They cuff her and shove her in the back of the police car. She watches the city pass in a blur of street lights and tries to ignore the soreness in her wrists. She keeps quiet, but in her mind she’s cussing up a storm. Fuck them two pigs. Fuck the entire Detroit PD. Fuck all them cops and their mamas too.
She’s got her Fuck The Police speech already worked out in her head when the car turns onto the street where the precinct is. Her irritation and annoyance are at their peak as the police station comes into view…
…then they fizzle and become confusion and alarm as the car drives right past it.
“What the hell is going on? Where y’all going?”
The only reply is the steady hum of the engine while the car cruises down the street. A cold, hard knot sinks into Twinkie’s gut. Where are they taking her? What are they gonna do to her? Is she gonna wind up as yet another dead trans woman of color found in a dumpster or by the river? She forces herself to breathe slow and even to stop herself from shaking.
The car parallel parks next to a building that dwarfs the others on the street. A tall, chain-link fence encloses the building and the courtyard in its oppressive, stainless steel embrace. The headlights shine on a faded sign that reads Walton Tenement Complex. Near the bottom of the sign, an artist with a good eye for color and line has spray-painted AKA HELL in stylized flames.
“Watch her. I’ll be right back,” says Burke. He gets out the car and disappears into the shadows in front of the building. After what feels like a couple of minutes, Burke comes back, and Sands hauls Twinkie out the car and toward the ominous remains of Walton Tenement Complex.
It’s gray inside. Not gray as in painted gray, but gray as if all the color and vitality evaporated, leaving behind this specter of a building. A sheen of dirt, dust, and mold spreads across the floor and the walls. As the cops lead Twinkie toward a rickety elevator, a chunk of ceiling drops and shatters onto the floor.
Sands mashes the button. The elevator chugs along the shaft. The doors creak open, and the cops lead Twinkie inside. Burke taps the button for the top floor. The doors close with the metallic clang of a jail cell. The car lurches up so slow that Twinkie wonders if she’d be better off walking. It gives her plenty of time to read the graffiti scrawled on the sides of the elevator.
tamara suck dick 313-555-6021
<–It’s true she swallowed my cum right here.
Reagan can kiss my ass.
(Bush too!)
Fuck da police!!!
Bitches Ain’t Shit
GET HIGH BEEP RAJI 313-555-9476
Then she sees red-brown
(blood)
droplets speckled on the wall, and she has to remind herself to keep breathing.
The prisoner pants beneath the duct tape placed on his mouth. Two dead bodies lie on the floor, heads pulverized by the bloody hammer in Fred’s hand. The prisoner trembles, liquid warmth streaming from his bladder into his pants as Fred advances toward him.
There is pain and bursts of white as hammer slams into his skull…again…and again…and again.
The elevator dings when it finally reaches its destination. The doors squeak apart. Twinkie yelps at the grisly scene straight out of some dark fairy tale.
A huge
(giant)
(wolf)
man in a three-piece suit wipes his bloody hands with a white handkerchief, staining it red. He towers over three
(little pigs)
(wives)
dead bodies that have their heads bashed to smithereens. Two guards stand against the wall, still and silent as statues. Twinkie tries to run, but she doesn’t get far before Burke and Sands grab her and haul her toward huge, bald-headed Black man wiping a hammer clean of blood and bits of skull and hair.
“Have a seat,” he says. Burke and Sands shove her into the nearest chair. Her peripheral vision catches sight of the two cops moving toward the large man. Her heartbeat pounds against her ears, drowning all the sound.
Twinkie doesn’t want to look, but the corpses less than two feet away, and she can’t help it. She’s seen a dead body at a funeral home, but that’s after rigor mortis and formaldehyde have taken root. Unlike the carefully preened and prepped bodies at a mortuary, these loll on the floor like life-sized dolls carelessly tossed on their backs, their faces, or their sides. A pearly tooth sits near her toe. She inches her foot away.
The body next to her absorbs all her focus. It stares up at her, eyes wide open, its mouth frozen in a toothless “O.” Only moments ago, this used to be a living, breathing person. Now it’s a hunk of rotting meat. Will this be her a few minutes from now?
She glances around, but now, instead of three bodies, there are four, and the fourth–what the fuck!
Her own corpse lies on the floor. It’s eyes are closed. Blood leaks out of a handful of holes in the torso. An ear and several fingers are missing. She shudders at how solid it looks. If she bends down to touch it (and there’s no way in hell she’s gonna do that) will she feel her own cool, rigid flesh?
What creeps her out, though, is how familiar it is. Somehow, she remembers how being shot felt like being hit in the chest by a red-hot sledgehammer. She remembers jagged pain where her fingers and ear used to be. If she keeps looking, she’s gonna throw up, but at the same time, she can’t look away.
Twinkie tears her eyes off the body when she hears a deep voice calling her by her government name. She glances at where her corpse was, but the only thing there is a spot of dull gray floor with red oozing across it from the dead bodies lying nearby.
“Are you gonna kill me?” she asks.
“If your boy make me,” he says. His rumbling voice touches a primal part of her brain that still fears the fangs and claws of lions and leopards. She hopes Elrond’s on his way to get her outta this.
The moment Elrond walks into the Intensive Care Unit to visit Nichelle, he sees the envelope and knows something has gone wrong. His name is written on its surface in huge, curved letters. It contains an index card and a gold hoop earring. A gold hoop earring that belongs to Lady Twinkie.
He plucks out the index card and reads four words scrawled across it: Walton Tenement Complex. Tonight.
It’s a trap, that much is certain. Abducting Twinkie is meant to evoke powerful emotions and force him to do something rash. This cannot be simple retribution. If the aim were simply to be rid of a nuisance, a little patience and good timing could have accomplished that. Nay, this is Fred sending a message about the power he has–power that the events at Inferno has threatened.
It’s all clear now. Fred’s power lies in his seeming invincibility. When Elrond refused to kill him at Inferno (and the less he thinks about that, the better), he showed the world that Fred was not a god or a monster, but just a Man.
Elrond crumples the envelope into a tight ball. If Fred wishes to find him tonight, he will, and he will not live to regret it.
The Walton is cursed.
Before the white man came with ships and guns, the grounds where the Walton Tenement Complex now stands were once believed to be cursed. Anything living that spent too much time in that place was tormented by horrible visions. Most came back utterly incoherent, muttering about the darkness between spaces and the things that live there.
Anything buried there came back…wrong.
A Potawatomi legend tells the story of a woman named Watseka whose son Ogima was killed by a bear. In her grief, and despite the warnings of her neighbors, Watseka brought the body of her son to the cursed grounds and buried him there.
(Was she the first? The first to ever try it? Unlikely.)
She waited and mourned. Then he came back.
Things were fine at first. The woman was happy; she had her son with her again, alive and
(not quite)
whole. He was slower and clumsier than before, and he always had the stench of the grave about him, but a mother loves her child no matter what. She fed him, clothed him, and cleaned him just as she had when he was an infant. Her baby was home, and that’s all that mattered.
That changed when Ogima started to speak.
For when the words came out of his mouth, all knew that whatever came back from that sour ground wasn’t Ogima. He knew things, terrible things, about everyone in the village, things no human witness would know, and he took fiendish delight in sharing them with all who had ears to hear. When he spoke, his voice was no longer human. It was cold and deep like soil where the dead lie. His words scraped against each other like bone against bone, and he aimed them at those they would hurt most.
(”No one cares what you have to say, old man. Everyone knows you’re a fool, and they laugh behind your back.”)
(”Your children hate you and are waiting for you to die”)
(”Do you know what horrors await you after you pass from this world?”)
Then several dogs in the village went missing. After that, a child who had a tendency to wander disappeared. Some stories say that Ogima ate them. Others say that Ogima lured them to the cursed ground, and that evil spirits carried them to the land of the dead.
The villagers who had powerful medicine attempted several healing ceremonies, but the evil spirit would not depart.
From there, the legends vary on what happened next. In one version of the story, the best hunters in the village burned Watseka’s hut with both Ogima and Watseka inside it. In another, the elders get those with the most powerful medicine to have a healing ceremony to banish the thing that inhabited Ogima’s body. Then there’s the one where Watseka, plagued by guilt, takes a large rock and hits Ogima in the head with it until he is dead again, but she is never the same afterward.
(“Sometimes, dead is better.”)
Sometime between the hours of two and three in the morning, night changes. Darkness grows thick, almost solid. Buildings and people seem thinner, less real. Strange things lurking between spaces peek out from the shadows. The city takes on a sinister, haunted quality that hangs on everyone and everything.
On nights like this, Blake wonders why he signed up for this shift. The B&E they’ve been called in to investigate isn’t the worst that’s happened during these odd hours, but Blake can’t quite shake the feeling of being sized up for something worse. Then he sees the way Sarge gets answers out of people without even trying, and he remembers that Sarge is the kind of cop he wants to be: the kind who protects and serves the people. It gives the station a good laugh to hear him say it, but it’s true.
”You’ll learn,” they say.
Lately, though, something weird’s been going on with Sarge. Every now and then, Blake catches him reading through old case files, and he pretends not to notice when Sarge sends furtive, suspicious glances his way. A couple of times, Blake asks him what he’s working on, but Sarge always shakes his head and says it’s nothing.
He doesn’t want to think it, but what if Sarge is up to something? What if he’s doing something wrong? No, that can’t be it. Sarge would never–or would he? He’s got a kid going to college in five or six years, and this job doesn’t pay anywhere near enough to cover that. If someone offered a few thousand dollars for a favor or two…
Blake sips from a steaming cup of too-sweet cappuccino, courtesy of 7-11 He’ll just have to keep his eyes open, then. He hopes he’s wrong, though. After questioning the witness about a break-in (all signs point to a couple of neighborhood teenagers looking for street cred), Sarge goes back to the car. As he slips into the passenger seat, Blake notices C-H-A-R spray-painted on a boarded-up store across the street. The black letters glare at him like a warning.
Sarge’s phone rings on the way back to the station. When he answers, Blake watches his face subtly change from relaxed to tense to angry. Whoever’s on the other end just delivered some really bad news. Sarge speeds up and hangs a fast right.
“Everything alright, Sarge?” he asks.
“No,” says Sarge, “There’s something I need to do. I’m taking you back to the station.”
“What? Why?”
Sarge stops at the red light and gives him a look that makes him feel like an ant under a microscope.
“Is there any reason why I shouldn’t trust you?” asks Sarge.
“I don’t understand.”
“I know somebody’s been moving the files. If it’s you, you better tell me. Because if I find out from somebody else, I will personally dedicate my life to turning your world to shit.”
How could Sarge say that? How could he–has Sarge ever trusted him? Was all this mentoring crap a cover for keeping an eye on him? Of all the–well, he can’t get mad at Sarge when he was wondering the same thing about him. If anyone deserves being pissed at, it’s those dirty cops.
“I have nothing to do with that,” says Blake. “Now that we both know neither of us is in on it, do you mind telling me what’s going on?”
The light turns green. Sarge stares at him a moment longer then hits the gas.
“I’ll explain on the way,” he says.
The Walton is alive.
(”Some places are like people: some shine, and some don’t.”)
Ever since the first stone of its foundation was laid into the ground, it has been plagued by accidents and violence. Take a trip to Detroit Public Library and dig around the archives, you’ll see.
Detroit City Voice. July 12, 1970:
Scaffolding Spill Kills Construction Crew
DETROIT–A team of 19 construction workers at the construction site of the Walton Tenement Complex were killed when the scaffolding suddenly collapsed.
Great Lakes Paranormal Weekly. December 7, 1977:
Local psychic: Detroit tenement “a haven for paranormal activity.”
Clairvoyant and Detroit native Samantha Greene tries to avoid Walton Tenement Complex if she can help it. According to Greene, the land upon which it stands “has gone sour.”“There is a malevolent force that dwells there. I’m unsure whether it’s the cause of the terrible things that have happened or a result of it, but there’s something watching, waiting.”
The D-Tribune. February 17, 1983:
Walton Complex Gunman Arrested
DETROIT–Terrence Jackson, 38, has been arrested for the shooting at Walton Tenement Complex that resulted in 19 casualties, including Terrence’s wife and two daughters. In his statement, Terrence claimed that voices commanded him to slaughter all the Walton residents then turn the gun on himself. However, Detroit police arrived just in time to prevent further carnage.
Motown Inquirer. May 14, 1988:
DEA Raid Ends In Slaughter
DETROIT–A raid on the Walton Tenement Complex carried out by the DEA ended with thirty-eight people dead, including twelve DEA special agents. Local authorities claim that a routine drug bust of a crack cocaine manufacturing lab became all-out war with the tenement’s residents.
Motor City Herald. October 9, 1992:
Cannibal Roams Streets Of Detroit
DETROIT–Police discovered the half-eaten remains of an unidentified man at Walton Tenement Complex. Police were sent to the apartment after neighbors complained about a stench coming from inside. The killer remains at large.
Detroit City Voice. March 16, 1995
Walton Rennovation Plans On Permanent Hiatus
Detroit–7 months after purchasing the Walton Tenement Complex for $50 million, David Yeung announced that his company, Metro Realtors, placed plans to renovate the building on permanent hiatus.
Yeung’s announcement comes on the heels of an avalanche of incidents resulting in injury or death.
The 313 411. June 13, 1997.
Feral Dogs Slay Local Resident
Simon Hernandez, 29, was killed yesterday when he was attacked by five feral dogs roaming the area near Walton Tenement Complex. According to eyewitnesses, Hernandez was walking to the convenience store when five wild dogs came onto the street and began chasing him. When he was overcome, the dogs attacked, inflicting multiple injuries.
The animals remain at large.
Detroit Free Press. September 11, 1998.
Double Suicide At Abandoned Apartment Building
Brian McGavin, 18, and Rose Warner, 17, were found dead in a room in the apartment building formerly known as Walton Tenement Complex The autopsy report for both adolescents indicate that the cause of death was self-inflicted poisoning.
McGavin and Warner had been dating at the time of their deaths. Notes and letters passed between the two suggest that they had formed a suicide pact.
Detroit News. October 30, 2017:
Arsonist Sets Fire To Walton Tenement Complex
Five people are dead and fourteen injured due to a fire that erupted on the first floor of Walton Tenement Complex, an apartment building presumed vacant since 1996. Firefighters claim that evidence suggests that the fire is likely the result of arson.
Ramirez pulls up to the Walton seven-and-a-half minutes after Elrond calls him. He peers up the Walton’s nineteen floors, and a sense of deep wrongness overcomes him. He has half a mind to turn this car around and go straight to the station and stay there. From the look of discomfort twisting his face, Blake must be thinking the same thing.
Ramirez whips his head around when someone calls his name. Elrond emerges from the darkness. There’s a faint glow about him, as if his spirit shines from within. It’s a startling contrast to the blue jeans, rumpled t-shirt, and sneakers.
“You did not say you were bringing another,” says Elrond.
“This is Blake. He can help. The way I see it, we need all the help we can get.”
Elrond steps toward Blake and levels an appraising gaze upon him for what feels like almost a minute. Whatever Elrond sees in Blake must pass muster because it’s down to business as soon as he’s finished with…whatever the hell that was.
“I have done preliminary reconnaissance,” he says, “There are more people inside than its condition indicates.”
“How many?” asks Ramirez.
“I have counted thirty-eight thus far, though there are likely more. Most of them are on the middle floors. The top floor has at least three more, including the hostage. However, the potential for armed conflict is the least of our worries.”
“What do you mean?” asks Blake.
“This place is more than a building. It is a doorway for the Unseen. An ancient evil slumbers here,” says Elrond, “Its poison has soured the land and seeped into the very walls. You must take care while inside.”
Blake chuckles and says, “You say that like this rundown old thing is more dangerous than drug dealers armed to the teeth.”
“It is.”
The Walton is hungry.
It’s a patient predator. It spends years waiting and watching for just the right one to lure into its stony embrace. If you’re under the sway of its macabre enchantment, you’d never know it. You’d have no idea why you’re so drawn to this ugly building that’s barely standing after years of neglect.
Like this one who seeks to destroy his enemy. Does he think, I want to set up shop in the cursed apartment building? No, of course not. It’s the power of this place, understand? It has a hold on you. Without knowing why, you come up with reasons to come back and make excuses for sticking around.
It goes through phases, too, like the moon. During its waning years, only the most violent and bloodthirsty people (like our man Fred here) are susceptible to it. When it waxes full, no one can resist it. It can twist the hearts of good, strong people and make them do terrible things.
Ah, here come more people. Two are mortals. They are easy enough to corrupt. But the third is something…other. His spirit shines bright as a star. He is strong, so strong. He would have to be to bear his burdens and keep going. Such sorrow, such guilt, such loneliness. His heart is fertile ground for the power that dwells within the earth beneath the Walton. If it can get him, it will be full for a long, long time.
So, the Walton waits…
This place feels…wrong.
At first glance, it seems to make sense, but when you look again, it doesn’t work the way it should.
These windows, for instance. From the outside, they look like standard single windows you’d find on any Section 8 apartment. But when Blake peeked inside one of the rooms, there were double windows instead.
They make their way down a hall that ends in a sharp right turn leading to an elevator that, based on the exterior dimensions of the Walton, should hang outside the building itself.
Blake recoils and almost shouts a warning as Sarge presses the button got call the elevator, but the bell dings, so it’s too late. The doors open on a roomy car that’s still somewhat clean. The buttons are odd. There is no thirteenth floor, as is the custom with most buildings, but there are two buttons for the fourteenth floor. A G button marks the ground floor.
Hold on. He uses his finger to count the buttons.
“What?” asks Sarge.
“Too many floors,” says Blake.
“Huh?”
“There’s twenty buttons, but only nineteen floors.”
Elrond–Blake still can’t get over that name–pushes the button for the top floor. The doors close, and the car lurches upward. The unease that’s hung over him like a cloud eases a bit. It was probably nothing, just paranoia.
Then the elevator suddenly stops between floors twelve and fourteen, and the doors open…
…onto a hallway lit by soft white lights that give it a spectral haze. Several doors run parallel along the walls. The mortals see nothing out of the ordinary, yet a deep terror takes root in their hearts and makes them shrink back ever so subtly.
But Elrond sees the twins plain as day. They are, or seem to be, Elven children roughly six years of age. They stand still, hand-in-hand, and stare, unblinking at the trespassers. He can look upon them without fear because the Eldar are not frightened by the spirits of the dead, for they Unseen is partly where they live.
As if sensing their presence, Ramirez frantically presses the button for the top floor, but the doors remain open.
“There might be a stairway,” says Blake. He tries to keep his voice from shaking, but he doesn’t entirely succeed. Ramirez responds with the most You gotta be fucking kidding me look in human history.
Elrond steps into the hallway, his eyes coolly taking in the surroundings. To all appearances, this is just a normal hallway with the ugly gray floor common to many urban apartment buildings. If their eyes could pierce through the shroud separating Seen from Unseen, it would appear to Ramirez and Blake that bright light shines through Elrond’s form and raiment, as if through a veil, more ghostly than the spirits of the dead that dwell here.
Elrond leads them through corridors past rooms that, spatially, should completely overlap one another. Blake and Ramirez follow because Elrond is the kind of guy people follow, and they’d rather be in this freaky place with him than without him.
They do all but hold Elrond’s hand as they twist and turn through labyrinthine hallway (It shouldn’t take this long to walk from one end of this floor to the other, should it?), subconsciously registering the oddities of the Walton’s structure with growing unease.
They make a right, a left, and a right, and, just as the emergency stairs come into view, each notices that the other two are gone.
Blake stands in the middle of the hallway and wonders how in the world he got separated from the others. He and Sarge were sticking to Elrond like glue, but then they turned down a corridor, and he and Sarge simply weren’t there anymore.
What happened to them? Where did they go? Blake calls out for them, but the only response is his own voice echoing through the floor. It’s a desolate sound that makes him feel small and helpless and alone.
While Mom’s back is turned, Liam slips away to go play in the toy department. There’s a pair of shiny cowboy guns that make a loud pop when you squeeze the trigger, and he can’t get enough of them. He finds the guns, and after five minutes (an extraordinarily long time for a six-year-old), he abandons the guns and explores the toy department. He passes by the dolls and other girly things and spends some time among the action figures. He finds a bunch of really cool action figures that do things when you push a button or squeeze their legs, plus the little green men and G.I. Joe’s and Ninja Turtles. After ten minutes, he’s done with them too, and he heads over to the Legos. As soon as his eyes alight on the Lego castle (with a dragon!), he needs Mom to get it for him.
But Mom’s not there. Mom’s shopping.
He goes to where he left her, but she’s gone. Distress rising, he searches through the aisles for her, but he can’t find her. He calls her name, but she doesn’t answer. He feels like that baby deer in that cartoon–what was it called?
“Mom! Mom!” he cries. His vision blurs as tears leak out of his eyes.
(She’s gone because I’m bad.)
A lady who works at the store finds him walking around and crying like a big baby. She brings him to Mom, and seeing Mom right there with her basket full of stuff makes his heart shine like the sun. Mom hasn’t gone away. She’s right here and hugging him tight.
“Don’t you ever scare me like that again, do you understand me?! Someone could’ve hurt you!” shouts Mom, eyes wide and wild. Liam nods.
He’s lost and alone again, but this time, the strangers really are out to get him. He picks up the pace, scanning the hallway for the emergency exit.
He stops dead at his tracks at apartment 217.
The door is slightly ajar (and wasn’t the last time Blake passed by). A keychain dangles from the doorknob.
He knows he shouldn’t go any further. He shouldn’t walk toward Room 217. He shouldn’t slowly push the door further open and peek inside. He most certainly should not, under any circumstances, cross the threshold into the room.
There are a million and one reasons why shouldn’t be doing this, but he, like Bluebeard’s wife, can’t resist the pull of morbid curiosity. Unlike Bluebeard’s unfortunate wives, he knows there is a chamber of horrors waiting around the corner, but he presses on anyway. In a horror movie, this is the part where he’d be punished for his stupidity, and he knows it.
What he finds is a surprisingly roomy apartment just shy of lavish, though the decor is stuck in the 70′s. In all other ways, it’s a perfectly normal apartment just like other apartments in other buildings similar to this one.
Quiet as a cat, he pads through the apartment. Here is the living room with its big, bulky TV, the kind they used to sell before HDTV. Here is the kitchen, small but spotless. Here is the bedroom with the bed made up and clothes put away and not strewn about the bed and floor like they are in his apartment.
(It’s in the bathroom.)
And here is the bathroom. It’s huge compared to the ones in apartments he’s had. A plastic curtain winds around an old-fashioned white tub with claw feet. He walks toward the tub as if urged by something outside himself, like one of those sleepwalking episodes he used to have as a kid.
He pulls the shower curtain back.
The woman in the tub has been dead a long time. She’s bloated and falling apart in the cold water like some huge, fleshy glacier melting to pieces. Her dark hair floats in the water like seaweed.
This isn’t the first dead body Blake has seen (nor is it likely to be the last), but the one’s he’s come across were either freshly killed or pumped full of embalming fluid. It is, however, the first he’s encountered in such a state of decay. Oh, God, the smell–
The dead woman starts to rise.
Blake screams, but the sound never escapes his lips. It trips and falls inward, toward the deepest, darkest parts of himself. He stumbles back, eyes never leaving the dead woman coming out of the water, her fingers curled around the edge of the tub like claws
Blake turns and bolts. He scrambles to open the door to apartment 217, which is now closed and locked, though it wasn’t before. Too frightened to think, he doesn’t know that all he has to do is unlock the door and twist the knob to let himself out. He’s shaking too violently to move the lock, so he takes a few deep breaths to settle his nerves.
Calm reaches through the blind panic, and he steadily reaches for the deadbolt and unlocks the door. He laughs at himself for how hard he made such an easy and simple thing.
Already, a fog is starting to cloud over his memory of what he saw in the bathroom. There was no dead woman in the bathroom. That was just him thinking up worst case scenarios and getting carried away. Besides, if something was there, it would have gotten him by now. If he turns around, he’ll see nothing, nothing at–
Ice-cold rotting flesh closes around his throat, and he’s turned around to stare in that awful, dead face. As she chokes the life out of him, he doesn’t think help! or Sarge! or Elrond! He thinks: char.
It’s the smell that lures Elrond to push open the door to Apartment 217. A light, floral scent mixed with salty sea air unlike what would be found in any place save one.
When he crosses over, he is no longer inside Walton Tenement Complex, but standing on soft grass. Ahead, concentric rings surround a short, grassy hill, white-barked trees making up the outer ring, and golden mellyrn comprising the inner ring. Niphredil and Elanor blossom upon the hill like white and yellow stars. The wind stirs his hair as he approaches the hill, and he hears the distant calls of seagulls.
As serene as it is, Elrond never liked being near Cerin Amroth, for each time he passed by, a deep sadness would pierce him through his core. He once believed it was the psychic residue brought on by the sorrow of a people who knew not the fate of their king, but, looking upon it now, he knows that it was foresight, not hindsight, that grieved him thus.
Elrond ascends the gentle slope of the hill. He is almost near the summit when he finds the mound of earth that protrudes ever so slightly. He recognizes it as the resting place of the unnamed dead. But even though it has no marker, he knows who is buried here. He sinks to his knees and places a hand upon the cool earth where Arwen lies. Though she is merely a few feet away, never has she been farther from him.
He wants to howl in agony and tear his clothes, screaming his pain to the heavens and the earth and the sea. It would be better for him of he could, but that process by which he could give full voice to his anguish is broken, so his mouth is sealed in stony silence.
Perhaps that is why he begins clawing at the dirt, making huge gashes in the soil as if from some wild animal. Others may say that he should make peace with Arwen’s passing, that he should just accept it. But he cannot; he will not.
He digs and digs, nevermind the dirt getting all over his clothes or the cold seeping into his hands. With feverish intensity, he sinks his fingers into the earth again and again and again.
Finally, long after a Man’s or an Elf’s muscles would be too sore to move, he reaches her. Cradled in the earth, Arwen lies with her eyes closed and hands folded, perfectly preserved despite the passage of time. It’s as though she is not dead but merely sleeps. That she does not breathe is the only sign that her spirit has passed beyond the Circles of the World. Elrond pulls her from the grave and holds her close, kissing the top of her head just as he did countless times when she was small and more than a few times when she was grown.
He holds her for hours. He is still holding her when the sun has disappeared behind the horizon, and darkness reigns. Then, as if observing himself from outside himself, he sees himself lift Arwen into his arms with ease and carry her from Cerin Amroth.
“It is alright,” he tells her, “I have you. Ada has you.”
Elrond descends the hill, feeling oddly detached from himself, as if some power has him in its grip and propels him forward. Observing himself from outside himself, he sees himself bring Arwen into the corridor outside apartment 217 at Walton Tenement Complex. He sees himself turn down the hallway where the elevator waits, doors open. The power driving him has him press the button for the basement. The elevator’s doors shut, and the car jolts into movement, sinking down, down, down…
…to the bowels of the building. It’s a flat, open space with a few square columns holding the structure up. There is not much to watch, but the power dwelling in this place is strongest here, where it is closest to the land. It tugs him toward a certain spot where the boundary between Seen and Unseen is thinnest.
Here, it says, Each must bury his own.
A sledgehammer and shovel spill from behind one of the columns. He is loath to put Arwen on (under) the ground, so he briefly lays Arwen down and spreads his topcoat upon the concrete. He gently places her atop it and lets her know this will only be a moment.
He retrieves the tools and brings the sledgehammer high above his head and swings it down with all the force he can, making a small crater in the slab. The sound rings through the hollow underbelly of the building. He swings the sledgehammer again and again until he’s smashed an Arwen-sized hole in the stone floor. He gets on his hands and knees and scatters the rubble with his hands, uncovering the cold soil beneath.
He picks up the shovel and begins to dig.
Ramirez stands alone in the hallway. What the fuck just happened? Where did Blake and Elrond go?
A hard, cold feeling in his gut says that something has happened to him. He draws his weapon but keeps the barrel pointed down. The last thing he needs on his conscience is to shoot
(Sara)
some kid just playing around.
A presence disturbs the air. Ramirez feels a solid something brush against him. He whirls around and sees Elrond walking past him carrying something. Maybe it’s the odd lighting of the hallway that seems to come from nowhere and everywhere, but it looks like a skeleton. And is Elrond singing?
Elrond’s soft, rich voice cooing the simple words of what sounds like a lullaby. For a moment, a hush comes over the floor, as though all the things that scurry in the walls, beneath the floors, and within cracks and fissures stop what they’re doing and listen.
Ramirez starts to follow, yelling to get Elrond’s attention, but he keeps going as though he can’t even hear. His long, purposeful strides cover so much ground that Ramirez has to jog to even lag behind. As Ramirez gets closer to him, the skeleton turns its head toward him and makes a shush gesture with its bony finger placed where the lips should be.
Ramirez stops so fast he almost falls over. He struck by a sudden and powerful urge to flee, take the stairs and keep going until he’s in his car and driving at top speed away and never look back. What was it Elrond said? Some evil force lives here. But is this bone deep compulsion to run the power of this place or plain common sense?
The sign marked EXIT shines in bold red letters.
He’s in the basement, the voice tells Fred.
He glances at the hostage secured to the chair. With zip ties and duct tape holding her in place, there’s no way she can cut or wiggle her way out anytime soon. But if she does, well, he’ll just take care of her just like he’s gonna take care of her little friends crawling around this place like roaches.
Fred rises from his desk.
“If anybody come up here that ain’t me, shoot her,” he says. He walks straight to the elevator, and presses the down button. As he waits, something catches his eye. On the wall, beneath bold red letters that scream IN CASE OF EMERGENCY BREAK OPEN GLASS, an ax glimmers with malevolent purpose. Fred smashes the glass and pulls out the ax.
The elevator groans up the floors. Its door opens lazily, and he steps inside, only vaguely aware that another presence shares the elevator with him. Perhaps, if he were in a less enchanted state, this presence would cause him alarm, but whatever power turns the gears in his mind has, perhaps permanently, jammed his capacity to feel fear.
The elevator rocks to a stop on the second of two fourteenth floors, the one that comes right after the twelfth. Some short Spanish fuck with a stupid Hitler mustache stands there gawking as if he’s never seen a Black man before. He strides forward and lifts the ax to chop that dumbass look off his face. The moment Fred’s eyes fall on the pistol in his hand, the guy aims and fires.
The first bullet goes into his shoulder. It should feel like the head of a red-hot sledgehammer penetrating his flesh, but he feels, at most, something like a pinprick. The next two into his belly. They don’t hurt either. The others land in his chest, bicep, liver, and thigh. He crashes to the floor. The guy with the mustache runs into the stairway, leaving him there. He should be dead. Maybe he is dying.
What he sees in his final moments is not his life flashing before his eyes, but that long-haired freak and that short fuck walking out of here with his dope and his money, taking over his businesses, becoming the biggest players in Detroit.
He’s dying? Whatever. He doesn’t give a fuck about dying. But he’ll be damned if his enemies take what’s his. They’ll pay for this. They’ll all pay.
As Fred hovers in that liminal space between life and death, voices murmur around him.
His friends seem stronger than we first thought. More…resourceful. Perhaps we should have been dealing with them.
What about this one? Can we still use him?
Perhaps. There is one more thing he may be able to do.
Fred musters all his will to roll to his side and grab the ax. He groans as the wound oozes. He coughs up blood. Little punk should’ve shot him in the head, and two more times to make sure. They think he’s just gonna stay here and wait to die? Fuck that. He’ll burn this muthafucka down before he lets that happen. They got theirs coming to them.
Meanwhile, Twinkie watches the two guards pile the bodies in the corner nearest the elevator and return to their posts. Is that how they’re gonna get rid of her? Pile her up with the others and make her disappear?
She wants to blame Elrond for not getting his white ass over here in time, but she ain’t got nobody to blame for this but herself. She should’ve known something like this would happen. If they came after Nicki, of course they’d come after her sooner or later.
Don’t trust nobody. That’s what she was supposed to do. It’s how she survived so long on the street. She forgot that trusting people only gets you hurt.
It was too much to hope that Elrond would come. Why should he? He doesn’t give a fuck about her. Nobody does, except Nicki,and she’s damn near close to dead. Now she’s gonna get shot or cut up, and it’s nobody’s fault but hers.
Think, Twinkie, think. How can you get out of this without those two guards plugging her full of holes?
“Hey, I, uh…I gotta go to the bathroom,” she says. One of the guards tilts his head doubtfully.
“I know it sounds like a trick,” she says, “but it’s been a minute. But, hey, if you don’t mind the smell of piss, I guess I can go right here.”
One of the guards sighs and shakes his head. He cuts her from the chair and leads her by the arm into that creepy-ass elevator. His grip is tight, and that shit hurt like hell. He presses the button for the 18th floor. The elevator creaks down then jerks after what feels like forever.
The doors part onto a hollowed-out shell of a floor littered with debris from the crumbling ceiling and walls. The guard damn near rips her arm outta her socket as he hauls her into a cube of plaster and concrete that almost looks like it was once a place where people lived (and died). He slings her into a barely hidden corner.
“Hurry up,” he barks.
“Got a napkin or something?” she asks. He stands there, face blank. She sucks her teeth.
“Turn around, then. Can you do that?”
The guard turns around. She makes a big show of fumbling with her pants, waiting for that moment when his attention flags ever so slightly. A chunk of something hard sits at her foot.
“Almost finished,” she says, reaching down for it. The guard relaxes and sighs, tilting his head up just so as if to ask God why he was stuck with babysitting her. Twinkie raises the chunk of concrete in her bound hands, and strikes the guard in the back of his skull. The gun clatters to the ground, and he goes down like a sack of potatoes.
She twists her wrists free of her restraints and picks up the gun, but her wrists are so sore that she can’t hold it for shit. She tosses the gun aside and hurries toward the elevator, pressing the call button. The doors open, but there’s no light inside. From within, a soft whisper calls her name. Andrea…
Fuck that. When a haunted elevator calls you by your government name, you take the damn stairs. She’s glad she’s got on tennis shoes.
Someone’s footsteps echo through the stairwell. Twinkie crouches down as low as she can and peeks between the bars holding up the railing. Someone emerges from the hallway, and Twinkie recognizes the cop who took Nicki’s statement when Elrond first got here. What was his name? Rodriguez? No, Ramirez. He’s holding a gun.
(stay still don’t move stay still don’t move)
Ramirez looks up, eyes widening in shock. Twinkie gets up and runs up the stairs until–
“No, wait!”
Twinkie stops. Last thing she needs is to get her ass shot after she just got away from the guards. Ramirez slowly approaches, putting the gun back in his holster and putting his hands up.
“Twinkie, right?” he asks.
He continues, “Don’t worry. We’re getting you outta here.”
“’We’ who?”
“Elrond, me, and Blake.”
“Elrond?”
“Yeah. C’mon, let’s go,” he says, “we need to get outta here.”
She follows Ramirez down the stairs. As they make their way closer to the ground floor, Twinkie can’t shake the feeling that many eyes are watching and many ears are listening.
The Walton, if it had eyes, would watch with keen interest as Elrond, absorbed in digging in the ground beneath the building, pays no heed as the door to the basement eases open without a sound, and out steps Fred shambling like a walking corpse, shirt soaked with the blood ebbing from the bullet wounds all over his torso. The ax hangs by his side and gleams menacingly in the dim light.
(I got you, muthafucka.)
Elrond ducks just in time to dodge the blade that would have cleaved his head clean off his neck. He has no time to wonder how a mortal managed to sneak up behind him before he has to dart aside just as the ax chops down where his shoulder would have been a split second before. Dirt and bits of concrete fly from the groove left by Fred’s swing.
Fred sweeps the ax in wide arcs, growling as they whoosh past Elrond’s vital organs again and again. Through the haze of his bloodlust, he’s dimly aware that this long-haired freak has hit and kicked him repeatedly. Something warm trickles from his lip, brow, and cheek. The basement echoes with Fred’s labored breathing and the clash of metal against stone as he attacks and misses over and over again.
“That all you got, faggot?” he taunts. He lifts the ax high to split Elrond’s head in half like a log. Instead of cleaving him neatly in two, it’s caught in Elrond’s grip and smashed into his face. Fred spits blood and broken teeth into his pretty-boy face and cackles with mad glee before ramming him into the concrete pillar nearby. The impact makes a vaguely human-shaped crater. Aiming for Elrond’s head, he drives the ax into one of the pillars with such force that the handle splinters and breaks in two.
If one looks at the fight with eyes that can perceive the Unseen, one would see two figures, one light and one shadow, meeting and parting then twisting together in dizzying patterns. They become a hurricane of battle that swirls through every square inch of the basement. There is no broken bottle of loose chunk of cement that cannot, at any second, be swept up in the maelstrom and jabbed into a limb, a torso, or an eye. It is no longer just the two of them, for their fight has gone beyond mere survival. They are good and evil, life and death, Ali and Foreman, Bruce Lee and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Elrond and Fred, slugging it out in the bowels of this bewitched edifice. Only one will walk away from this sweaty, bloody mess.
Abandoning all pretense of civilization, they come at each other with all they have. A tangle of fists and feet emit inhuman grunts and snarls. Every time Elrond slams his fist into Fred’s, he sees Nichelle’s swollen and purple, hair singed to the scalp. Every time Elrond smashes his knee into Fred’s torso, he sees her anchored to machines that make her breathe, eat, and shit.
For an instant, Fred feels a flicker of an emotion he hasn’t felt in years: fear. He hammers Elrond’s face and body, yet no matter how much or how hard he hits, this asshole won’t eat the pavement. A single hit from his massive fists can–and has–dropped guys even bigger than this fool, but he bounces up like one of those dolls with the round bottom that you hit and hit but it just rocks back and forth then stops upright. He’s clobbering the hell outta this guy, giving him punishment no one else has survived, but this fucker…just…won’t…go…down.
With his injuries, it is either a miracle or a curse that Fred still stands at all. Elrond slips and slides from his attacks with a kind of grace that makes it look like he is dancing, and, in a way, he is. Fred’s strikes get slower and clumsier as he strains under the burden of exhaustion and frustration. This is the moment Elrond has been waiting for. He flows around Fred like water, intercepting his every move and turning his offense into openings for counterattacks. A strong, quick finger jab to the armpit immediately followed by driving a heel into the side of the knee damaging the nerves in Fred’s arm and leg. His arm and leg useless, Fred uses a pillar to struggled to his feet.
You better kill me, punk. ‘Cuz if you don’t, I’ma kill you and that bitch, thinks Fred. Images come to him, vibrant as a memory: Fred doing unspeakable things to Nichelle as she screams and cries for help he cannot give, Fred strangling her, his own head clasped in Fred’s hands as he struggles to no avail, Fred pressing on his head like a vice until it splits open like a melon.
In a last, desperate charge for victory, Fred roars and hurls himself at Elrond, crashing both of them into a pillar. It fractures like a bone. Dust showers down on them from above. Ignoring the pain in his back and ribs, Elrond puts Fred’s massive neck into a choke hold, looping his legs around his ribcage, and squeezes. Fred gasps for air and flails, pounding on Elrond’s arms and legs, but Elrond only draws his hold tighter. By some uncanny power, or perhaps just the will to live, Fred stands, lifting Elrond with him, then lets himself fall flat on his back, cracking a few of Elrond’s ribs as he lands directly on top of him. Elrond still does not let go. Fred lets out ugly, rasping gags, squirming and kicking his legs fruitlessly. Elrond does not let go.
Fred does not die so much as he simply…stops. He is no longer breathing. His body goes slack and cold. His dead weight droops and refuses to move, like a machine that has simply run out of fuel. When he is certain that Fred’s spirit no longer inhabits his body, Elrond finally releases his hold.
The lights go out. Ramirez has never been afraid of the dark. It’s what’s in the dark that frightens him.
“Slow,” he whispers. Twinkie follows his lead, feeling their way down each stair one at a time (one, two, three). He counts the stairs as they go down (five, six, seven), the better to know how many floors they went.
As they step down (nine, ten, eleven), Ramirez hears–thinks he hears–something on the stairwell. It starts off faint like a whisper (thirteen, fourteen, fifteen), but as they go down (seventeen, eighteen, nineteen–there are nineteen stairs for each floor), the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
He pauses on the stairwell to get his bearings when he hears it again. Slow, deliberate, closer. If whatever it is is human, it can’t be more than three or four floors above them.
“C’mon, we got this,” he says.
“I– I can’t,” whispers Twinkie.
“You’re doing fine,” he says.
“It’s not that,” she says.
She lowers her voice, and her words quiver as she says, “Something’s following us.”
A chill washes over Ramirez. If Twinkie hears it too, that means that whatever it is is real. Part of him wants to open the emergency door and book it toward the elevator as fast as he can, but another thought stops him. What if this thing wants them to do just that?
If it can see in the dark, there’s nothing stopping it from running up to them and doing whatever it has in mind. It must want them to know it’s there. It must want the to panic, maybe fall down the stairs and break their necks, or go running blindly into one of these apartments and find something even worse.
“We’ll be OK,” he says. Will they?
As the heat of battle fades, Elrond looks around. He swipes the wetness at his nose and finds blood. Sharp pain threads through his ribs, and his head throbs in tune with his heartbeat. It feels as if a Mountain-troll has taken its club to his head and his side.
Fred lies on the floor, dead. A few yards away, Arwen is on the ground next to an unfinished hole.
What is he doing? He should be digging. The shovel is broken, so he uses his hands. From a far-off place, someone calls him.
(“Help us!”)
There is, momentarily, a need to respond, but it will have to wait until Arwen is safely cocooned in the womb of the earth from which she shall revive. His nails break and bleed from the effort, but he must keep going. Arwen needs him.
The Walton watches. If it had lips, it would smile.
From deep within, in a place the evil inhabiting this building cannot touch, comes a memory. The line between past and present blurs, and time stops and pools around a single moment.
It starts off gently, like a lone snowflake drifting from the sky. Then, like an avalanche, it overtakes his senses until he is no longer kneeling on the ground scooping up the soil beneath the building with his bare hands, but…
…standing upon the cool, rocky shore in the Gray Havens. The gulls’ melancholy cries echo across the bay.
The ship is almost ready. Twilight will shortly be upon them. His eyes swallow up every detail about her, for this is last time he will see her face by the light of day until he either passes into Mandos or the Enemy is defeated once and for all.
He knows she must depart, but he cannot let her go. She is his beloved, his lady, the mother of his children, his most trusted advisor, his lover, and his best friend. How will he go on without her?
“Let me come with you,” he pleads.
“You are still needed here,” she says. He cares not. Let his people dwindle and the line of kings fail if it means she can remain by his side. He holds her as tight as he can without causing her pain. If he keeps her close, if he loves her enough, maybe she will not have to leave.
“Stay,” he begs.
“You know I cannot,” she says. They have spoken of it before. If she remains in Middle-earth, she may live, but her spirit will dwindle until she is naught but a phantom of what she once was.
The ship is ready. He escorts her to the dock where the white ship awaits.
He wants to step onto the deck with her and sail away, leaving behind Endor and its sorrows. As if sensing this, she stops and brings her lips to his. He returns her kiss, and drinks in the intoxicating taste and feel of her one final time. Her clever hands slip beneath his robe. His body awakens as it senses a flicker of her once insatiable desire. Then the shadow of her torment comes upon her, and it fades. She lays her head upon his shoulder.
“I will wait for you,” she says.
Then she asks, “Will you promise me something?”
“Anything.”
She puts her hand upon his chest. His heart thumps against her palm.
“Do not close your heart to the world. Stay kind. Heal its hurts. Give your wisdom and strength to those who need it. Can you promise me that?”
He nods. She kisses him, chastely this time, then boards the ship.
The ship casts off, floating smoothly toward the Sea. As it sails into the horizon, the sun sets forever.
Elrond shakes his head, dispelling the enchantment this place has cast upon him. He looks at where "Arwen” lies, but recoils when he sees that, instead of his daughter, there is a pile of bones. What on earth has he been doing?
(“Elrond, wherever you are, get here quick. I don’t think we can outrun…this.”)
(“Lord, please don’t let us die here.”)
Lady Twinkie is in danger. Ramirez too.
The stairway is dark. He can only see the barest outline of the steps and the railing, but this is enough to allow him to bound up at full speed, two and three stairs at a time.
He hopes he is not too late.
There are more footsteps following them now. Soft steps, deliberate steps. Closer, faster.
Twinkie clutches Ramirez’s arm in a death grip. They’re going way too slow. There has to be a way to speed this up without falling down however many flights of stairs there are.
(step…step…step…)
If she could just see what’s following them, even if it’s too horrible for words, she might be able to handle this better. It’s like those scary movies where they don’t show the monster itself, only the weird, creepy things that happen around the monster. Those are the ones that give her nightmares. A ghost or demon can be exorcised. A vampire can get a stake through the heart. A serial killer can be shot or beat to shit. But this? The stuff you can’t even name? That’s terrifying.
“What floor are we on?” she whispers.
“Um…each floor has nineteen stairs, and we’ve been walking a while. We must be four or five floors down.”
Twinkie could’ve sworn it was more than that. Then again, she wasn’t counting stairs. She is now, though. She’s grateful to have something on her mind other than the thing–or things–following them.
(step…step….step-step-step…step-step…)
It sounds even closer now, less than a floor above them. One flight of stairs (Oh, Jesus). Half a flight of stairs. It’s right behind them. Hot breath sends cold chills down her spine. It reeks of dead things. I swear to God, if it touches me, I’ll piss on myself.
Ramirez pauses to feel his way down the next flight of stairs. What’s he stopping for? They gotta get the hell outta here! Can’t he feel that?
Below, something else ascends the stairs at an urgent pace. She can’t quite see exactly what it is save for the cool, gentle way it shines, like starlight. As the light draws closer, the presence behind her recedes, and she sees more of it. Twinkie recognizes a humanoid shape glowing as if lit from within.
It’s–no way! Elrond’s bounding up the stairs so fast he’s damn near flying.
“Where the hell you–” she starts, but he gets right to it without so much as a hi, Twinkie, are you OK?
“Your partner does not have much time,” he says to Ramirez, “He is on the thirteenth floor. You must find him and take him out of this place.”
“What about you?” asks Twinkie.
Elrond gives her a wicked grin, and it’s no wonder Nicki fell for him. She’s always liked the ones that got a bit of the Devil in ‘em.
He says, “I believe the saying is, ‘I got this.’ Now go, and do not look back.”
Ramirez only sees about half a second of what happens next, but whatever it is shakes the shit out of him because he grabs her hand and takes off so fast he’s damn near dragging her down the steps. Twinkie wants to turn around. She wants to turn around so bad, but the streaks of white at Ramirez’s temple that weren’t there before tells her it’s best to keep her eyes forward.
The light radiating from Elrond is just enough to see by, so they speed down the stairs until they reach the thirteenth floor. He walks briskly down the hall, turning this way, turning that way, calling for someone named Blake, but he still hasn’t let go of her hand.
“Do you have to hold my hand like I’m six years old?” she asks.
“Last time I didn’t, and all three of us got separated. So, yes.”
They find him in apartment 217. At first, she thinks he’s dead. He lies on the floor stock-still, eyes bulging as if he got up close and personal with something utterly horrifying. Foamy spittle drizzles out of his mouth. He’s white as a sheet.
Still holding her hand–goddamn, she’s not a baby!–Ramirez kneels next to him and checks his vitals.
“Can you help me carry him into the elevator so we can get him outta here?”
“The elevator?” asks Twinkie.
(”Andrea…”)
“I…uh, OK.”
They get Blake into the elevator–
(”Andrea…”)
and her shoulders promise soreness for at least a couple of days. The doors close, and gears groan as the elevator descends.
Blake breathes a bit easier now that he’s away from that room, but he hasn’t come to yet. He’s good-looking enough, as far as scrawny white guys go. He’s got Dumbo ears that stick out from his head, and he needs a haircut. The ear is slowly turning from white to pink as color returns to him. Her stomach growls. That’s right; she hasn’t eaten dinner yet. Maybe the delicate flesh of Blake’s ear can hold her until she gets home. Her stomach growls again. Both ears, then. But why waste the rest of him? She’s so, so hungry, and there’s plenty of him to keep her full. Besides, he might not make it anyway, so why waste the meat? If she gets the gun from Ramirez–
“You OK?” asks Ramirez.
“What? Oh, uh, I’m fine.”
The gun is right there. If she “accidentally” drops Blake, Ramirez will have to get from under his dead weight, and by then, she can have the gun and shoot them both.
“You sure?” he asks. She nods. He cautiously takes his hand off his gun.
Hold on. What the fuck? Was she really just thinking about–no, nope, nuh-uh She wasn’t about to– what kind of Hannibal Lecter, Idi Amin-ass…
Oh, hell no. They need to hurry the hell up and get outta here. She’s had enough of this fucking place. If she had money, she’d bulldoze the fuck outta this shithole. Then she’d burn whatever’s left over to a crisp and make sure to put salt on top just to be safe.
The elevator clunks as it hits the ground floor. Twinkie hurries the hell out of that demonic-ass elevator before it decides to try something else. They haul Blake through the lobby and out of the Walton without any other weird shit happening. A beat-up Toyota is waiting for them just outside the gate. Ramirez groans. The window is smashed open, and Fuck da police is spray-painted on the side. Twinkie’s never been happier to be walking toward a busted-up ride. They put Blake in the back seat face-up so that he can breathe better. They should get him to a hospital as soon as Elrond comes outta there. She glances at the building–holy shit